Troubleshooter (28 page)

Marisol Juarez, whom the Nomad Sinners had picked up in Chatsworth on December 22, seemed to shore up Aaronson's theory. Den had implied that she was the practice "heifer." The body hadn't been disemboweled, but the intestines had been exposed and the stomach sliced open. Den, the new cutter, had been rehearsing for when the stakes were higher, for when he'd be unable to afford a stray slip of the knife.

Tannino was working up a press statement now, warning the public and soliciting information about Good Morning Vacations. He was weighing whether to put it out in the upcoming news cycle or sit on it a few days. Obviously a media statement would alert the Sinners, probably causing them to abort the mission. The task force had nailed down quite a few of the variables, and the marshal was understandably reluctant to blow an opportunity to trap Den and Kaner and seize the drugs. Still, there were lives at stake.

The next victim, the carrier for Allah's Tears, was probably vacationing in Cabo right now, under the watchful eyes of Toe-Tag and Whelp.

Time to liaise with the Feebs.

"Jesus Christ, Dray, they've been nothing but detrimental," Tim muttered.

Guerrera paused, his back to Tim. He turned. "What?"

Tim waved him off.

Forgive and forget. And fast. You can't afford to play Lone Ranger. Not with what's riding on this one. You need to pool intel.

We have the intel.

Then maybe they need it. Or maybe they've got the missing jigsaw pieces. So you've got info on their case--you think they don't have their own dirt on the Sinners? Quit pissing in the corners and work together.

Bear stripped the rubber gasket from the casket seal, Aaronson gave the chisel a final whack, and the lock caved through the softened wood. The lid hopped an inch or two, the odor sending Bear, Guerrera, and Maybeck back a few steps. Tim moved forward as Aaronson threw the coffin open.

The face had rotted first, as faces do, but the combination of the sturdy casket, the cool ground, and the embalming had left the body surprisingly intact. Guerrera and Maybeck coughed, but Aaronson leaned in, unperturbed, and went at the soiled clothes with paramedic shears. Though Tim's eyes were watering, he stepped forward as the criminalist beckoned him closer.

"Now, with a drowning there should be minimal marks on the body," Aaronson said. "The corpse wasn't autopsied, so we shouldn't find any Y-pluck incisions." He peeled back the two sliced halves of Jennifer Villarosa's service jacket, revealing a dress shirt. "The trocar and cannula used during the embalming process to puncture the body cavities for fluid aspiration leave only a small circular scar in the upper..."

The shears ran up the length of the shirt, revealing a tight-fitting plastic undergarmet, like a toddler's onesie, no doubt superglued into place before her body was turned over to the Sylmar funeral home to be dressed in her uniform. Another slide of the shears, and all at once Jennifer Villarosa's considerable stomach came into view, incisions and sutures traversing the loose gray flesh like railroad tracks. Aaronson crouched to take in the scene up close and personal. The abdomen had been punctured several times with sloppy slashes. Even the stitches had been hastily tied. No wonder Den's knifework was now required.

Still bent over the corpse, Aaronson muttered, "I'd say you've got your probable cause."

Chapter
42

Ready to answer some questions, scumsuck?" Bear grabbed Rich by the hair and the union of his cuffs and slammed him against the cell block's wall. The detention enforcement officer buzzed the door, and Guerrera held it open. Bear shoved Rich out into the hall and walked him into an empty conference room. Tim unlocked the cuffs, and Rich stared at the three of them, rubbing his wrists, his face red.

"Christ, I know you're covering my ass, but go easy on the method acting."

"I'm not acting," Bear said.

"We've got information," Tim said.

Bear said, "You want to work together or you want to play your Feeb games?"

Rich's eye darted around. "You talk to Malane?"

"He's a paper-pushing prick."

"We've been ordered to liaise with the FBI," Tim said. "We're running down some leads. If someone's gotta ride along with us, we'd prefer to deal with a field operator. You can coordinate with your team from there and nail the Prophet. What we want is your intel on the bikers." He crossed his arms. "You get your guy, I get mine."

Rich cocked his head, a fall of hair blocking his good eye. "Why you so hot for Den Laurey? Want a Top Fifteen on your resume?"

Bear said, "He has three."

Rich started to respond, but Tim cut him off. "What's it gonna be?"

Rich held up his hands, a gesture of surrender. "Okay."

"Where's Goat?"

"We're holding him in the Federal Building in Westwood. He's drugged up, under heavy medical supervision. We haven't been able to get shit out of him--he's too scrambled. What's your information?"

"Not yet," Tim said. "I know you've been working Uncle Pete."

Rich bounced his head from side to side as if debating whether to give up the goods. "We intercepted some of Uncle Pete's cell-phone transmissions, but I'm not at liberty to disclose--"

"Then we're not at liberty to take you along." Bear snatched the cuffs from Tim and descended on Rich.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. We know he's in on the drugs. But we need to let it play out."

"So you can get the Prophet?" Tim asked.

"And because we need material evidence to make a case against Uncle Pete. We need the drugs, or else all we've got are recorded conversations about shit that we can't prove happened."

"You got enough for a warrant?" Guerrera asked.

"Again, not without material evidence to support the recordings."

Bear said, "Maybe we get a warrant. We're tighter with the bench."

Rich laughed. Even in the brighter light, his skin looked yellow. "Dana Lake'll put her pump so far up your ass you'll taste the Gucci logo. And besides, the evidence isn't with Uncle Pete. Or at the clubhouse. He's too smart for that. That's the whole reason he has the nomads. This ain't about warrants and kicking down doors."

Bear made an aggravated noise. Guerrera raised his hands when Tim glanced at him--your call. Down the corridor two prisoners were having a mouth-off in opposing cells, yo' mamas flying like shrapnel.

Rich grew uneasy from the pause--he wanted back in. "Help us get the drugs, and we'll sink Uncle Pete." He eyed Tim. "And you can get Den in the process."

Tim chewed his lip, still deciding. Finally he turned for the door. "Let's take a ride."

Chapter
43

Wisps of steam curled up from Jan's styrocup of McDonald's coffee. She inhaled it, as if trying to snort the caffeine. The skin under her eyes was pouched and gray, and her rumpled blouse sported stains at the right shoulder. New mom and resident agent in charge. Not an easy schedule. She kept walking purposefully through the late-night travelers straggling between the gates of Terminal 1, with Tim, Bear, Guerrera, and Rich moving swiftly to keep up. For the brief public walk, Rich kept between the deputies, his head lowered. Though he had left behind his armband and originals, he still had his shaggy rock-star hair, eye patch, and jail-cell odor. Upon meeting him, Jan had regarded him with a cocked brow, then turned her eyes to Tim with an unvoiced question, waiting for Tim's nod before cutting him in to the conversation.

"Inbound caskets rank right up there with diplomatic pouches," Jan continued. "In other words, they aren't checked."

"What's the real story?" Rich asked.

She gave a quick glance around. "Under the right circumstances, even a diplomatic pouch might require a furtive scan." She pointed to the sheaf of documents in Guerrera's hands. "But now we're in the clear. This is sufficient probable cause to buy us X-rays on all inbound caskets. If we get a hit on body packing, we'll need a warrant to cut open the corpses, but we can cross that bridge then."

"What if they're lead-lined?" Tim asked. "The caskets?"

"They will be, by federal regulation. We'll have to pop the lids and remove the bodies to do the scans. It's invasive. That's why I needed strong probable cause in my back pocket."

"Do we need to worry about private planes?" Rich asked.

"Good luck getting a corpse through here in a private plane. It's against regs--security and health--and we screen all large incoming cargo. But I'll put out a whistle, just to be safe."

She ducked through a doorway, and they followed her down a staircase to an open space on the lower level that had been transformed into a temporary workstation. A few irritable-looking duty agents reviewed paperwork at school-size desks. The desks were oddly arranged, leaving a square of central floor space unoccupied. A tarp draped across the ceiling provided the only separation between them and the restricted-access section of the luggage carousel overhead.

Jan had to raise her voice to be heard over the rumble. "This way."

She led into a separate office and closed the door behind them. The noise reduction was a welcome relief. Through the wide window, Tim watched a duty agent shoving a phone to his cheek, one finger plugging his other ear.

"I see your funding isn't keeping pace with your responsibilities," Tim said.

"They want us doing twice the work with the same resources," Jan said. "We make do." She looked from Tim to Rich. "Like we've all had to."

A sapphire blue Swiss Army suitcase tumbled through the ceiling tarp and crashed onto the empty floor space between the carefully arranged desks. The agents kept working, unperturbed.

"They should file for hazardous-duty pay," Bear said.

Jan directed them to chairs and sat behind a metal desk. "It's a brilliant plan they hit on--especially given the lead lining of tranport caskets. The only way to detect a drug packet in a corpse's stomach is to open the casket, pull the body, and X-ray it. Which, as I said, we aren't technically supposed to do."

"But you have," Tim said.

"Hell, yes. We spot-check. Now and again."

"Cargo from certain airlines and flights stands a higher likelihood of getting X-rayed?"

Jan's mouth arranged itself into a smirk. "Now, why would you say that?"

"Are foreign carriers more thoroughly checked than American carriers?"

"No, but yes." Jan paused, hesitant. "You didn't hear it here, but we might be more inclined to take extra precautions when it comes to foreign carriers. Suffice it to say, if a body's coming in from Jakarta, it's gonna get zapped."

"Racial airline profiling," Guerrera said. "How quaint."

"Wait a minute," Rich said. "Terrorists kamikaze four of our airplanes, and now you're screening Aer Lingus. What's that logic?"

"Our airlines screen our own planes when they take off at any point in the world. For other planes that we can't screen, we're less concerned that people will blow them up than that they'll smuggle something in. So we screen them on our end--for drugs and weapons."

Tim removed the sets of blank film from his pocket and dropped them on her desk. "That explains these."

She pulled out the black photographs and thumbed through them. "What's with the Rothkos?"

"My guess is they sent the film through with the bodies. High-speed film, more sensitive to--"

"Ionizing radiation." Jan thumbed out the negatives and found the first two sets cloudy from the X-ray exposure. "These were foreign airlines?"

"Yes. Mexicana and AeroMexico. Villarosa and Andovar were X-rayed."

"But Sanchez?"

"Flew the friendly skies with American," Bear said.

"That's United," Jan said.

"What?"

"The slogan. 'Fly the friendly skies.' That was United."

"Oh," Bear said.

Tim cut in: "They found their carrier route on their third try. American Airlines Flight 2453 into LAX--no X-ray."

Jan checked her monitor. "That flight's slated for a nine A.M. arrival. From today on, we'll be crawling all over it. And any other inbounds from the area." She blew her bangs off her forehead. "There's no way we catch this without your intel. When the dogs give their once-over, a decaying body loaded with formaldehyde would cover the scent pretty good. No way they'd hit on heroin inside a corpse."

"AT gives off a strong scent," Rich said. "They had to come up with something strong to overlay it."

Jan said, "Nearest international airport down there is...what? San Jose del Cabo? You alert Mexican Customs?"

"Yes," Rich said. "President Fox made a round of bullshit reforms, but there's still so much goddamn corruption at the ports it's hard to tighten up down there. You know what they say--Con dinero, baila el perro."

"I didn't know they said that. Live and learn." Jan said it without looking at him. "How are they getting the drugs into the stomachs?"

"We haven't figured that out yet," Tim said. "But we're assuming in some way that gives no overt indication that the bodies have been altered."

"Right, so even if a dog gets a soft hit and we take a closer look, run a hand along the coffin lining, peek under a blouse, everything's copasetic. No Y-pluck, no stitching. Lowers the odds that we'll yank the body out of there for an X-ray, especially if it's riding a domestic carrier."